End of another month.

Better than the last.

In some ways, not; there's a settled sadness beneath everything, but that's life, at least in this man's example. Shall we wallow? We will not wallow. Instead, it's a festival of Friday features. I'd say more, but it was Natalie's birthday, and I gave her a call, and we talked for . . . three hours.

I'm such a lucky man.

It's the end of the month, and you know what that means: our round-up of Cheap Chinese Crap Products, or CCCP.

Taking the nation by storm, it's the Eff-Caw-Eff Raven. Wait 'til your friends get a look at this!

Somehow I think the target market is not overly concerned with their current level of Caring.

When you buy this special travel toilette kit you will want to have it handy all the time so you can look at it

 

     
 

It used to carry, but doesn'ty anymore.

Good if you have items in wet
     
 

They did, but not anymore?

Not sure a zipper is an "accessory," but kudos for knowing some people know what YKK is. Assuming they're not fake.
     
  I've had many journeys that began with confidence and ended with peace and my travel kit had nothing to do with it.

 

In unrelated news:

  A thousand people last month said "air frier? That's the brand I trust"

 

Wow, it would be cool to visit this colorful store with so many interesting goods:

 

 

Can't find goods like this anywhere

 

 

 

Of course, radio audiences knew of Mary Noble, Backstage Wife, but now we have only Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife. It ran longer than the thing it parodied.

 

The end of the month also means AI Credit-Spending Blowout Theater!

Sin #1, I suppose, is animating old paintings. You shouldn't animate Hopper, unless you're the director of Pennies from Heaven, but I thought I'd try to get some pathos out of the car driving past, and the man staring at it, wishing someone would stop.

 

 

 

 

AI just can't see the pathos. It doesn't know pathos. Never will.

A pic of old Dinkytown here, with the long-gone Imperial Pants.

What?

I never knew there was an Imperial Pants. But that's what the original photo had.

 

 

 

 

My third favorite of the week: colorizing and animating a picture from the 1939 World's Fair Futurama booklet, and using a colorized version of another World's Fair picture as the end frame.

 

 

 

 

Not entirely inaccurate.

I realized that there was a world of opportunities in the Gobbler brochure.

I think it made it too 70s.

 
 

This, however, pleases me.

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

  
   

 

 

I had to go back to the old house to chop some wood. I’d left it behind in thick chunks-of-trunks form, and was obliged to cut it down. I went to the house across the street to get the axe, and was surprised to find it had been renovated and turned into a neighborhood center for reading and writing. I got the axe and started to chop up the wood on the boulevard. The pieces were enormous and I despaired of finishing the job, ever. And I did not know why I had to do it.

 

 

 

 

Someone's got a little Bryan Adams envy.

That's what I wrote upon hearing the first few bars just now.

WELL HA

 
 

One of the greats. There's just no arguing about it.

 

That will do1 Lucre awaits. See you Monday.